


Breathe

by LadyNimrodel



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 07:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4867718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNimrodel/pseuds/LadyNimrodel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: Person A meets Person B when they walk in on Person B having a nervous breakdown on the floor of the bathroom in a cafe. They forgot to lock the door to the bathroom they were using. What happens next and why they had the breakdown is up to you.</p>
<p>Harry has a panic attack in the rest room of a cafe and is helped by a young man who walks in on him by accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> This topic is rather close to my heart and I found writing about what it's like to have a panic attack kind of cathartic. I can't speak for anyone else's experiences but what happens to Harry here is what it's like for me. The next chapter will be about Eggsy :)

Harry can feel it before it happens. 

The shortening of his breath, the tightening of his chest, the tremors beginning in his gut. All because of a couple dropped i-beams at a construction site down the street. Harry closes his eyes and takes a slow breath and then another one but the trembling is only getting worse. When he opens his eyes again, the world is still the same but he suddenly doesn’t feel apart of it anymore. He is…distant. Removed. The little cafe he sits outside of is lovely, with its outdoor seating shaded by pink flowering cherry trees and removed from the main streets by a park on one side and houses on the other. Save for the construction down the block, it’s a quiet location on a quiet day. Yet if feels like he is looking at it through a snow-globe. 

All he knows is the thundering crash in his ears, morphing into rumbling explosions and the memory of bone-searing heat. 

“Merlin,” he says calmly even though he thinks he’s going to be torn apart from the inside out, “I’ve been compromised.” A quick glance at his watch tells him the contact is due in twenty minutes and he’s not going to make it. 

“What?” Merlin’s voice is sharp in his ear, jarring, “What happened?” there’s a pause where Harry would normally explain but he can’t get his jaw to unlock. He’s afraid that is he does, he’ll shake himself into teeny tiny pieces, “Galahad, this was only a contact meet-up. What happened?” the insistence jabs at him, only makes it harder for him to breathe. His stomach churns and he swallows thickly past his suddenly dry mouth. 

Trying desperately to keep himself from falling apart in public, he stands, the metal chair making a terrible scraping noise on the worn cobblestones. No one is staring at him but he still feels like he’s on display. Feels like everyone can see how badly he’s shaking and how he’s taking large gulps of air. Desperate for some privacy, he ducks into the little cafe and strides purposefully to the gent’s in the back. 

Every step his knees threaten to buckle, his ribs are collapsing in on him and the world around him seems so far away. 

The walk to the bathroom takes a lifetime. 

“Harry,” Merlin’s voice in his ear is gentle now but it still sets his teeth on edge. Or maybe that’s just the tremors, “Do yeh want me to send a taxi around?” He knows, of course. Probably caught one of Harry’s shaking hands in the corner of his glasses. Merlin, thankfully, is the only soul who knows about this…condition.

“No,” he says shortly and even that word takes a great deal of effort. A car is confining. He can’t get out of it while it’s moving if he needs to. At least a bathroom will offer privacy but he can still leave it if he needs to. He’s at the door now, the door knob a cold point of steady contact with reality. His hands fumble it briefly, making the air in his throat go stagnant but then he’s through, bursting into the neat little bathroom with all the elegance of a bull in a china shop. The door closes softly behind him. 

With an urgency he never understands, he rips his glasses off and throws them into the sink, followed by his tie and then his signet ring. He can’t stand the touch of them anymore, too confining against his body. When it doesn’t help, when the ache in his chest only gets worse and his teeth chatter from the force of his shaking, he hurriedly unbuttons his jacket and hangs it on the hook behind the door and pops open the first to buttons on his dress shirt. 

“Fuck,” he gasps because none of it helps (it never does) and braces both hands on the sink, dragging in great gulps of air. If only he could stop shaking then maybe he could start breathing properly. But the tremors pull at his frame, feeling like they’ve been dragged up from his very core and he can only wheeze helplessly into the sink. 

When Harry glances up, he catches sight of himself in the large, round mirror. His hair is falling over his brow and his skin his waxy and pale. When he wipes one hand across his cheek, it comes away damp. And he shakes. And he struggles to breathe. 

And he tries to remind himself it will pass. 

These attacks always do. 

Standing still becomes too hard, makes him feel like he’s going to fly out of his skin. Like a caged tiger, he paces the small bathroom, to the far wall and back, the whole round only taking four solid strides. As he does, he tries to regulate his breathing by counting to three between each breath but that only makes it worse. 

Bad enough that he’s on his knees, forehead pressed against the slick porcelain tile of the wall, shaking and breathing like’s he’s run a mile at a dead sprint. No, worse than that because he can actually run a mile at a sprint and never feels like he’s going to pass out. With a detached kind of desperation, he realizes he’s about to hyperventilate and he doesn’t know how to stop it. Merlin might have been able to talk him down a little but his glasses are still in the sink and right at this very moment, they could be on a different continent. 

And then the door creaks open, loud enough he can hear it over his ragged breathing. 

Surely he remembered to lock the door? But he’d been so occupied simply keeping himself together, he can’t remember if he did or not. He has a fleeting notion to be embarrassed at being found like this but that thought is shaken away, falls right through the cracks of the dark wings of panic gripping him. 

“Oh, sorry bruv, the door was…” he hears a voice say and then, softer, “fucking shit,” as he shivers and shakes on a public bathroom floor. He thinks the person left, hears the door close again but then there is a soft snick of the lock falling into place and he can feel someone else there, at his shoulder. With an effort, he take his eyes off the tile in front of him and finds a young man crouching next to him, eyebrows pulled back with concern. 

“Hey, bruv, sorry to intrude an’ all but I think I can help, yeah?” there’s no judgement in his eyes, no laughter pulling at the corners of his mouth and Harry finds himself nodding because, fuck, he _needs_ help. The young man gives him a warm, tiny smile, “Yeah, alright. Just listen to me, okay? Close your eyes and breathe on my count,” his voice is a tiny flicker of light, a handhold to grab onto during a free-fall and Harry closes his eyes and clings. 

“One,” Harry forces himself to breathe, “Two…you’re doin’ fine, bruv…three,” his shoulders convulse with a particularly violent shiver but as the young man reaches six, he finds he’s breathing easier. 

The panic slowly leaves his body, like the inevitable ebbing of the tide. 

So he focuses on the voice at his shoulder and uses it to ground himself beck into reality. 

“Nine…ten…there you go…eleven…” the young man doesn’t touch him, doesn’t move around. The only thing he can hear is his voice, the purposeful rhythm of his breathing. It takes Harry a moment to realize that the young man is breathing a pattern for Harry to follow. A steady inhale and exhale that reminds him of a calm sea, of flat waves rolling over warm sand. 

It takes him a long moment to realize the young man has stopped talking, even longer for him to note that his breathing is back to normal and the shaking is better. Less like he has an earthquake in his bones. The world is coming back; he can feel the cold tiles under his knees, smell the sterile clearer used to in the bathroom, aware of the prickle at the back of his neck that comes with someone else in his personal space. But most of all, he is left kind of flat footed that someone else witnessed his break down, even if that someone helped him work through it. Steeling himself (shoving his pride into the deepest, darkest part of himself), he glances at the young man and finds himself staring into warm blue eyes and the kindest expression he’s ever seen. 

“Alright?” the young man asks and he finds that, yes, he is. Shaky still, like his insides are foundations weakened by the earthquakes that shook him, but well on his way to functioning again. 

“I am, thank you,” he replies, voice even because he forces it to be. He’s beginning to feel vulnerable kneeling on the floor and is grateful when the young man offers him a hand. With as much grace as he can muster, he accepts and lets himself be helped to his feet by a strong grip and a warm smile, “You didn’t have to help me,” he says then wants to wince because it sounded a lot worse than he intended. But the young man doesn’t take offense. He just shrugs and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans. 

“Nah, I couldn’t just leave ya like that, bruv. Not like…” he makes a vague gesture but Harry knows what he means. Harry thinks maybe he should be embarrassed. Embarrassed that some stranger not only came across him falling apart on the floor of a public toilet but that he had to be talked down from the edge by said stranger. Maybe he’s still rather fragile but he’s only glad he can breathe properly again. 

“Yes. Well, I appreciate it,” he straightens his shirt as best he can with shaky fingers, “Might I know your name? Since you did me a rather selfless service.” The young man lifts his eyebrows and grins crookedly, a rather lovely, roguish expression. 

“Eggsy Unwin. Well, Gary, but no one calls me that. Just call me Eggsy,” he sticks his hand out again and this time Harry shakes it. Unwin. Of course. Harry thought he’s seen that particular grin before. He remembers Lee wearing it many times, before Harry got him killed. He feels a pang of regret and a stronger sense of destiny. 

“Eggsy, then,” Harry offers his own smile, probably just this side of unsteady but even so. Then he starts putting himself back together, sliding on his jacket and fishing his glasses, tie and ring from the sink. All the while, he is aware of Eggsy watching him closely, standing awkwardly by the door. Harry contemplates his tie for a moment, knows he still can’t bear the restriction and stuffs everything into the pocket of his jacket, uncaring, for once, of destroying the line of his suit, “How did you know how to help me,” he asks as he turns back around, pushing his hair back from his forehead, “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I don’t mind,” Eggsy shrugs again, an easy, practiced movement that Harry suspects he uses in a lot of situations, “Me mum does that for me when I go under like that. Helps keep my mind on something. Well,” he grins, “she usually tells me stories but I didn't want to weird you out or nothin’. The counting helps too,” and all at once it makes sense. Of course that’s how Eggsy knew how to help. Because he deals with the same thing. It’s a strange kinship to share with someone, he supposes, but it’s something. 

“I wouldn’t have minded a story,” he says slowly and is intensely glad Merlin can’t hear him now. Eggsy laughs, a bright sound that burns the way the last of Harry’s unsteadiness. 

“You’re an odd one, aren’t you?” he tilts his head to the side and yes, perhaps he really is Lee Unwin’s son. How odd the universe works sometimes. 

“Quite,” he agrees. No use in denying it, really. “I would like to buy you coffee, to thank you,” and then, because he suddenly has no control over his mouth, adds, “or lunch.” Eggsy considers him, a funny little smile on his face then nods. 

“Yeah, a’right. I’d like that.” 

**

They do get lunch, at an inconspicuous little restaurant of Harry’s pick that has a surprisingly good slice of pizza. He doesn’t tell Eggsy about his father; it doesn’t feel right. The very idea makes him feel uneasy, his skin pricking so he doesn’t think about it. He enjoys Eggsy’s uncomplicated company, his smile and enthusiasm. And not once does he ask what brought on Harry’s attack. Kingsman doesn’t exist here, there’s no Merlin in his ear and no fucked meeting with a contact. Just a boy in a pizza place telling him outlandish stories to make Harry laugh. 

And Harry feels like he might just be okay.


End file.
